


String

by Fly



Category: The Dollars Trilogy, The Good The Bad and The Ugly
Genre: Community: flashslash, Flash Fic, Gen, Hanging, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-03
Updated: 2010-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fly/pseuds/Fly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Originally written for Flashslash in December 2009 - words were wrap, forgotten, simper, frail.] The Good and The Ugly play a game with a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	String

Blondie's hands wrapped nine twists around the noose, lean hands tugging each coil tight. The rope was bleached the same colour as the sand, almost as twisted and withered as the grey, smooth-worn tree its other end was tied into.

Underneath Tuco's body, the bounty hunter widened his eyes. They were cavernous holes, belying a body frail with poverty and hunger and too much heat; the result of a man who'd joined the war because it was better than becoming a priest or a bandit, and then deserted it when it had turned to hell, and found a new job that was even worse. He was cocooned in sand and sweat and Tuco's straddling legs, spurs cutting into his sides, gun's noose buried in his hair.

"The way it seems to me," Blondie began, "is that it isn't fair sentencing a man to experience something you haven't seen yourself."

He tested the strength of the tree's lowest branch with a push of his foot - spurs rattled, but the wood held steady. Satisfied, he drew back, whisper of cigar smoke passing from his lips. Both he and the tree were lean, hard, sunbaked, forgotten in the desert's enormity. Tuco looked at the gnarled trunk of the makeshift gallows and still didn't doubt which one was more twisted.

The bounty hunter's hands pushed flat on the sand, and as soon as his back started to arch Tuco brought the butt of his revolver down on the back of his head.

"No," he said, "don't try and leave yet, you're still welcome. We're all going to play a game together, you can't leave before then."

Blondie's eyes glinted - Tuco slid off ("come on! you can't lie down here in the middle of the desert! it's uncomfortable!") and stood the man up, hands on his shoulders. Blondie tapped the sole of his shoe on the low branch. He did it again. The bounty hunter, slowly, stood on it - bow squeaking with effort. Blondie's hands dropped the noose around his shoulders, and he stood back - the bounty hunter stared at Tuco's gun, his simpering smile, the rings on his fingers - before moving back in, to tighten it.

"The rules," Blondie said through a mouthful of smoke. "You just have to wait here, and hang. My friend here - " he patted Tuco's back, who nodded proudly - "and I, are going to leave - me, that way; him, the other way. Then we both see who shoots first."

"Shoot - me?"

Blondie's mouth tightened like a rope. "No. My friend is aiming for the branch under your feet. I'm going to try to cut the string. Adios."

He turned.

Tuco did not.

He fired.

The ricochet spun Blondie's spur, and the sudden crack of wood and bone caused him to stare around, eyes just a little wider.

Tuco sniggered.

"It would have been a bad thing for both of us if you'd cut the string," he said, holstering the pistol, touching at the knife cuts on his neck from when that bounty hunter had interrupted their camp. "But if he'd turned me in for the money, you'd have cut me down, too."

The deserter's body hung, tattered uniform and white dead skin. Blondie watched it through a haze of smoke, eyes clear as the glint on gold coins.

"These days," he said, "all of our necks are wrapped up in rope and hanging on the end of a string. Good to know."

"Know what?"

"Good to know that if it ever comes to outdrawing you, I'm better off making sure you have nothing to shoot with."

Blondie's hand touched the leather of Tuco's pistol cord, pulling it fractionally tighter around his neck.


End file.
